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rm^inn Claims Conference Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany Claims Conference Holocaust Survivor Memoir Collection Access to the print and/or digital copies of memoirs in this collection is made possible by USHMM on behalf of, and with the support of, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Library respects the copyright and intellectual property rights associated with the materials in its collection. The Library holds the rights and permissions to put this material online. If you hold an active copyright to this work and would like to have your materials removed from the web please contact the USHMM Library by phone at 202-479-9717, or by email at [email protected]. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc. https://archive.org/details/inmemoriamnorber01fren 1 \ IN MEMORIAM NORBERT KALTER 1896-1918 IGNATZ KALTER 1897-1940 45 years ago, in October of 1952, when I first came to America, my cousins in New York gave me the possession left by my uncle Ignatz who had died in New York in February of 1940. My inheritance consisted of a set of hand held jewelers scales, two sets of jewelers weights, a beaver hair shaving-brush a Gillete safety-razor, some documents, letters, and family photographs. For one year, during the Confused days of the battle of Britain, I had been interned as an "enemy-alien’ on the Isle Of Man. The coat of arms of that windswept island contains the inscription ’’Quoumque Jaeceris Stabilis". Translated into fortune-cookie English it says: TYou'll Always Fall On Your Feet’. This could very well have been my motto also in those days; I was young, curious and active. Personal upsets hardly ever phase me for long, and I tend to take a greater interest in the living than in mourning the dead. I put the shaving brush on my bathroom shelf, inserted a new blade into the razor, made a mental note of the odd collection of letters, photographs and documents, which dated from the late 18-hundreds to Hitler’s Third Reich, and stashed it all in a drawer. The jewelers scales and weights I added to other memorabilia on the mantlepiece. That was in 1953, my uncle had been dead for 12 years. Twenty years after I stashed my uncle’s papers in that drawer I was on a sabbatical in France and lived in Bourg La Reign, south of Paris. I had few friends there and I spent my evenings at the theater or at. concerts. When the sun was shining I walked the streets of Paris and when it rained I wrote letters home and listened to the radio. A Hebrew lamentation caught my attention one evening. I have never attended religious services, but that dirge struck a chord. I listened intently, I pressed the ’record’ button and later I replayed that tune many times. A tune or an image, sometimes kindles a memory; I thought of my uncle and the documents he had brought with him to America. It occurred to me that this lament would make a suitable background for the story of his life and death. I am somewhat of a universal dilettante. I write short stories, which I self-publish and give to my friends, I dabble in clay, my masterpieces decorate our mantelpiece. My animations are unique; My actors are little men and women made of painted acorns and piOstachio nuts, held together by pipe-cleaners. They represent orientals, Jews, Gypsies, courtiers, clowns and acrobats, as they w m mi 10D| <2 act out my stories on the screen. My techniques do not meet commercial standards;- but no matter - there is always a captive audience on the public cable channels and I am quite satisfied with honorable mentions at amateur film festivals. I have produced animations and scientific lectures, I have used my shows to expound ideas and philosophies; my ideas and my philosophies. To make a documentary was a new and interesting challenge. My documentary was a success, it won prizes and drew tears from many who saw it - including myself. That documentary is about my uncle’s tragic existence and, peripherally, touches on events and circumstances that have shaped his life and brought about his death. Much of the stress in the last three years of his life were brought about by the events then taking place in Europe as they affected the Jews of that continent. I did not intend to make a film about the Holocaust, however. I was interested in the impact adverse circumstances had on his fragile personality but, during the making of that film I had to think a lot about his my uncle’s life and a deep sorrow took hold of me. Another 25 years have passed, new impulses moved me to take up these threads again. A closer examination of the remarkable selection he made of documents to bring with him on a journey that should have been a new beginning, impels a broader focus on all of the tragedy and absurdity in the lives of my maternal grandparents. Many persons mentioned here, including my parents, were murdered in the Holocaust, but war and genocide are universal - and this, too, is not a Holocaust memorial. While staying with the documentary format, I have added comments from my memory to fill in the' some of the missing links. Where circumstances or events are inferred I will say so and give my reasoning. BIRTH CERTIFICATE The undersigned hereby affirms that on the 4th of December 1897 a son was born in VIENNA III, KLEISTGASZE 22 to Mr. ELIAS KALTER a butcher born and officially registered in Molodyncza, Galicia by his wife EIDEL, ne WEISS. The child was given the name IGNATZ Entered into the Birth Rolls of the Jewish Community in VIENNA Litera T Nr. 2914 VIENNA 9 DECEMBER 1897 Michael Brosler (Registrar) 3 As told to me by my deceased distant cousin, Helen Rosenfeld, my maternal grandfather, Ely Kalter, was one of three brothers born to my Great-Grandfather, Mordechai, who probably lived in Molodincza, Galicia around the middle of the 19th century. Ely must have been born around 1870 because my mother, the eldest of the six children of my grandparents, was born in 1894. One of Ely’s brothers emigrated to the United States and my cousin Helen was his granddaughter. She kept the family together by arranging get-togethers at Bar Mitzvahs, weddings and funerals . Before Helen it was her mother. Rose Unschuld, who filled the roll of family matriarch. My mother, Yetti, was followed by the eldest of her three brothers, Norbert, and he by Ignatz. My aunt Rosl was born on the first of May of 1899, at this writing she is living in Como, Italy. My youngest aunt, Amalia, and uncle Fritz were born in this century and both died young, Fritz in the Holocaust, Amalia of medical complications of a major operation. The birth of Norbert, ' and also the move of the Kalter household from Galicia to Vienna must have taken place during the three and one half years between the birth of my mother, in June of 1894 in Galicia, and that of Ignatz, in December of 1897 in Vienna. I do not know whether Norbert was born in Vienna or in Galicia nor the exact date of his birth. My grandfather must have quickly established himself as a butcher in Vienna because family photos show him and his wife as prosperous burghers of the period and I suspect that they had some means before they came. I know little about the life of my mother and her siblings. My mother gave me only rare glimpses into her childhood; She sometimes spoke of a hedgehog which my grandfather kept and the mischief this pet got into at times. She spoke of horses and a carriage and that they took part in public parades along the Lustallee. 1 knew my grandfather as a liberal man. My grandparents observed some Jewish customs and my grandfather went to a synagogue on high holidays. None of the children went with him and they seemed to have no religious interests. All went to the public schools. My mother, and Ignatz spoke the Viennese dialect of German. My uncle Fritz and aunt Rosl spoke correct German, my grandfather and grandmother spoke the kind of 'Yiddish’ accented German probably spoken by the assimilated Jews of Galicia and sometimes they spoke Polish. Schooling must have been minimal for all of them; Norbert joined my grandfather in the business at an early age, perhaps at 15 or 16 which would make it about 1911. My grandfather had a stall in the central meatmarket of Vienna where he traded en-gross and en-detail. Eventually they also opened a retail store in the 3rd • . ’ district of Vienna. I assume that Norbert was at that time pulling his weight substantially in the business. My uncle I gnat z, on the other hand, seemed to have no such interests:. CERTIFICATE OF APPRENTICESHIP GUILD OF JEWELLER AND GOLDSMITHS IN THE ROYAL CAPITAL AND IMPERIAL RESIDENCY It is hereby documented that HERR IGNATZ KALTER has learned the trade of Jeweller and Goldwork in the establishment of LUDWIG ENGEL in the time between the 15th of August 1912 and the 15th of August 1916 and that he has conducted himself well during this period. He has satisfactorily fulfilled the duties required for the release into the profession and is therefore released from the apprenticeship indenture. This certificate is bestowed on him in confirmation of these facts. LUDWIG ENGEL GUILD OF JEWELERS VIENNA 15TH AUGUST 1916 In those days all tradesmen had to carry a 'WORK PASS BOOK’ in which apprenticeship contracts, indentures, testimonials and work local permits were entered and officially confirmed. Ignatz took his work book with him to the United states. It contains several testimonials from other jewelers and shows that he worked for various firms until December 1918 when he probably began to work on his own. In 1914 World War I started and all able-bodied man had to undergo fitness assessments. MILITARY RECRUITMENT OFFICE CONFIRMATION OF STATUS OF FITNESS IGNATZ KALTER of Vienna, Class of 1897 is unfit for military service and is, accordingly, not required to report for induction NATIONAL DEFENSE FORCE (LANDS STURM) VIENNA, JUNE 22ND 1915